When the Ecology is Fire: Rounding Up Friends, Forage, and Fuel in Musselshell County

 Guest post by Clemson student Elizabeth Murray

On a windy, bluebird day in the Bull Mountains of Montana, a circle of people stands in the waving grass of a sparsely forested hillside. On the other side of the valley, blackened trees pierce the sky amidst already fallen trunks. Dustin Sciacca and Noah Willson, from the State of Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, are explaining the forest management practices used in the area to reduce the risk of severe wildfire events in the region, like the 2020 Bobcat fire. Later, in his decked-out truck, Dustin recounts how all aspects of the community come together to fight fire. While being aware of the conflict in the region, it’s evident that land and community are the lifeblood of Musselshell County.

The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation funds local volunteer fire departments to work through the hot, dry summer months, meaning many of the local wildland fire fighters aren’t career firefighters. Dustin told how many farmers, ranchers, neighbors and friends are dedicated to helping protect the land and its resources. This is a community where people’s livelihoods and the economies are directly reliant on the land; a major wildfire puts that at risk. The community comes together to not only fight fire but do it to protect each other. In an area polarized by conflicting opinions on land stewardship, especially in the plains north of the Missouri River, I was inspired to hear Dustin describe how the community comes together.

But is fire all that bad? Before coming to Clemson, and really before learning from this course, I didn’t think all that much about it. I knew North America had problems with catastrophic wildfires, but I wasn’t all-too familiar on the how or the why, much less the specific ecology and behavior. Now, I understand fire as something much more complex, not black or white, not good or bad. Our awesome TA, Ethan Van-Derpoel, presented some of the conclusions of his thesis to the group. In this data, he explained that overall forage quality increased after burning, and the fire yields increased nutritional benefits for livestock. So, while fire can put ranchers and crops at risk for the season, in the long-run, fire is beneficial for foragers.

On the topic of grey areas: the legality of controlled burning in central Montana. It’s a kind of situation where it’s not illegal, but it’s also not defined as legal. So, currently, the Montana DNRC is not managing the forest with controlled burns and focusing on thinning instead to manually reduce fuel for future fires. This brings another grey area to light, which is the actual effects of wildfires on fuel availability. The inherent nature of fire is to consume, so naturally it reduces overall fuel in the fire. But there’s an interesting phenomenon called delayed mortality, where trees are damaged either in the roots or set back by the loss of needles, eventually killing them years after the fire. In the sites we tested that had been burned, many of them had significant fuel on the ground in charred logs and branches. Driving past a littered hillside, Dustin commented how the next fire in this area was going to be much faster and hotter. In this way, fire consumes fuel but can also create more.

As far as I understand, the solution is frequent controlled burns. Not hot enough to cause delayed mortality and controlled to ensure landowner security, but still enough to consume fuels on the forest floor and regenerate forage. This would not only keep forest communities intact, clear and healthy, but also reduce the risk of catastrophic fires in the future. The importance of research like Ethan’s is made evident by the legality issues and misconceptions of fire by the public, highlighting the need to reach the close-knit community.